from the staff, we learned that blogging as a social networking tool is useful (literacy learners are publishing and can interact with others about their writing online)
caution/issue: article with homeless mothers who present their mainstream desires rather than their difficult lives; this is not how literacy learners have tended to publish in print, rather sharing their hardships. Would the more publicly accessible medium of the internet affect this? (see identity)
posting to and maintaining a blog involves different characteristics than commenting on blogs. Comments can be posted anonymously; they are usually shorter than a post; they respond to a written trigger; and according to Brock et al, provide opportunities for "less-powerful audiences to contest privileged viewpoints" (pg 1051). This is a way literacy learners can use blogs in addition to posting to their own blogs.
However, Brock et al also noted that the blog comments were moderated
Brock, Andre, Kvasney, Lynette and Hales, Kayla (2010)
pg 1051
"Credibility becomes an important factor when seeking to understand how blogs have so quickly come to challenge online media sites as a leading source of news, especially people are less likely to pay attention to a medium they do not perceive as credible"(p. 101) (Johnson & Kaye, 2000, 2004).
Johnson, Kaye, Bichard, & Wong 2007
"Johnson and Kaye (2007) discovered that politically-interested Internet users relied more on blogs than any other new source for news and information and that blogs were judged as more credible than than online newspaper sites, online cable television sites, and online broadcast news sites"(p.102).
Johnson, Kaye, Bichard, & Wong 2007
"Similarly, Kim (2006) found that politically-interested Internet users judges blogs as more credible than either portal or mainstream news sites"(p.102).
Johnson, Kaye, Bichard, & Wong 2007
"Although findings on the connections between general Internet or Web reliance and credibility are inconsistent, reliance on blogs has emerged as the strongest predictor of blog credibility"(p. 102-103 (Banning & Trammell, 2006; Johnson & Kaye, 2004; Kim, 2006)
Johnson, Kaye, Bichard, & Wong 2007
Four main reasons have been found why people use blogs. They are: they foster a sense of community among users, they gather information from different sites which allows people to see several pov's on an issue, blogs take on issues that the mainstream media often stays away from, due to volume and depth of information blogs are good for finding information on specific topics. (p.104)
Blogging
pg 1051